The Animalswere on the radio with their mega-hit
House of the Rising Sun. It was autumn of 1964 and the leading
edge of the baby-boom was looking for fun, fun, fun, along with America's
"I Get Around," Beach Boys. There were lots of upbeat ditties on the
radio from The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Mamas and Papas, The Kinks,
The Zombies and The Shangri-Las.

AM radios ruled
the street, from Sunset Boulevard in L.A. to Woodward Avenue
in Detroit, and Yonge Street in Toronto. Gas was cheap and
everybody was cruisin' the burger joints, drinking root
beer, and trading news of the soon to be released '65s.

Ford had cleverly jumped
the gun a few months earlier when they introduced the monstrously successful
1964½ Mustang, which could be ordered with a 271 horsepower, 289 cubic-inch
V-8. John Delorean's Pontiac GTO rumbled the main drags of North America.
Hip, young dudes were ordering 350 horsepower, 327 Chevelles, and the
Dodge boys were burning up the drag strips.

Hot Rod Magazine,
Motor Trend and Car and Driver kept us up to date on new
developments in the secret shops of Detroit. The big three were working
on big blocks that made it possible for a car to top 70 mph in first
gear! It was an exciting time.

With so much
heavy metal available, nobody quite understood why I was
so crazy about the Corvair. The new supercars were awesome
at acceleration in a straight line, but I was a fan of going fast
around corners. The low-slung Corvair was quick and nimble
on the narrow, twisting roads of the Canada's Province
of New Brunswick.

The sneak previews I had seen in
magazines gave me great confidence in the new Chevrolet Corvair. Even
hard to please car magazine scribes were excited. Little did I know
that by the spring, I'd be cruising south to Boston on Interstate 95,
behind the wheel of a new Corsa listening to The Rolling Stones.

In October
of 1964, an article in Car and Driver compared three competitive
models - the 1965 Corvair Corsa, Ford Mustang and Plymouth Barracuda:

"And it is here too, that
we have to go on record and say that the Corvair is - in our opinion
- the most important new car of the entire crop of '65 models, and the
most beautiful car to appear in this country since before World War
II.

When the pictures of the
'65 Corvair arrived in our offices, the man who opened the envelope
actually let out a great shout of delight and amazement on first seeing
the car, and in thirty seconds the whole staff was charging around,
each wanting to be the first to show somebody else, each wanting the
vicarious kick of hearing that characteristic war-whoop from the first-time
viewer.

Our ardor had cooled a little
by the time we got to drive the cars - then we went nuts all over again.
The new rear suspension, the new softer spring rates in front, the bigger
brakes, the addition of some more horsepower, all these factors had
us driving around like idiots - zooming around the handling loop dragging
with each other, standing on the brakes - until we had to reluctantly
turn the car over to some other impatient journalist. We were actually
annoyed about having to drive the new Sting Ray and the new Impala SS
with a great, storming 409 to propel it.

We said we'd give you a
comparative opinion, and there it is. We liked both the Mustang and
the Barracuda - for different reasons - and they're very good cars.
They have speed and handling and they're the right size - excepting
the Corvairs, they're the best of their kind.

The '65 Corvair is an outstanding
car. It doesn't go fast enough, but we love it."